Mirren had slipped a black strappy dress on over her head, and was now brushing out her wet hair. She stopped dead, looking straight at Kelsey.
‘Are you telling me that a certified hottie is throwing himself at you and you aren’t even slightly interested? Kelsey, you need to get straight back on the horse.’
Shaking her head dismissively, Kelsey lifted the flannel off her face long enough to roll her eyes at Mirren, before lowering it again.
‘No, no, hear me out,’ her friend persevered. ‘You don’t have to keep the horse. You don’t even have to ride it every day. Just throw it a few sugar lumps and take it once or twice over the jumps.’
‘Well, thanks for that great advice, Mirren,’ Kelsey groaned, before throwing the flannel straight into the kitchen sink, just feet away. ‘I’m just not… a very horsey person.’
‘You do know I’m not talking about horses, right, Kelse? Anyway, you’re leaving at the end of the summer. It’s not like anyone’s expecting a lifelong romance, is it? Have a summer fling then move on. You’ll be back in Scotland before you know it.’ Mirren nodded decisively as she spoke.
There it was again: that same urgent feeling Kelsey had experienced at the Yorick the night before when Jonathan had asked about her plans for the end of the summer. It was even stronger now.
‘Actually, I might stay on after the summer,’ said Kelsey, tentatively at first, as though she were testing out the idea. ‘If I were to stay, I wouldn’t want to make a fool of myself by burning any bridges here, and it wouldn’t stay secret for long if I did do anything with Will.’
‘Burn that bridge. Who cares? It’s just a sex bridge, Kelse, just get on it and then get over it. Live a little.’ Mirren was now waving her mascara wand across her thick black lashes.
‘Bloody hell, Mirr! Sex bridges? Horses? You should write for Cosmo.’
They were still laughing when Kelsey, suddenly startled by a glimpse at the time on her phone, leapt up from the bed.
‘We’re going to be late. Can you do my make-up, Mirr? Ugh, and can you pass me some paracetamol, my head is killing me. Why did I think gin for lunch was a good idea?’
Mirren patted a spot at the end of the bed and Kelsey shuffled down ready for her makeover. As Mirren expertly set to work with the contents of her bulging make-up bag Kelsey mulled over her advice.
Maybe a fling wouldn’t hurt, just this once. I am completely single now but if I did sleep with Will, I really would just be using him, not that I think he’d mind. It wouldn’t have to be some great love affair and he is lovely to look at, and his body is definitely… intriguing. That tan and those muscles… and he’d probably know what he was doing…
Mirren sat back appraising her work and handed Kelsey her hand mirror to examine her shimmering silvery eyes, dewy cheeks, and fair sculpted brows. Kelsey snapped back to reality, banishing Will to her subconscious again.
‘Ooh, it’s very Midsummer Night’s Dreamy. You really are very talented, Mirr. Thank you.’
‘Just a little mascara and lip gloss and you’re good to go.’ Mirren slipped black strappy heels – never flats, not ever – onto perfectly pedicured feet.
Kelsey reached for a silvery maxi dress that hung on the bathroom door. Its thin cotton underskirt had a light chiffon layer over the top, giving the whole thing a diaphanous, barely-there look: another new purchase in the summer sales from the lovely shopping arcade in town.
I won’t be able to speak to Jonathan up on stage tonight, but I can at least show him what he’s missing out on. And if we happen to bump into Will Greville at the pub afterwards, I might just arrange to meet him one day after work. Why the hell not? Mirren’s pep talk had left her feeling reckless and ready for some excitement.
As she slipped the stunning dress on over her glowing brown shoulders, Mirren gasped. Kelsey didn’t know it, but her sunny summer, living alone and enjoying the freedom that her pretty little flat and her busy new job afforded her, had changed her. It wasn’t just the new clothes, or the sun-bleached streaks in her wild hair, or the healthy shimmer on her skin: she was holding her head up higher and walking taller, in spite of all the offstage drama that had stolen so much of her sleep this summer.
Smiling in admiration, Mirren quickly held up her phone and took a picture of Kelsey who, grinning, raised one hand to her flowing hair, striking a pose. Mirren posted it to Instagram before Kelsey could even begin to protest:
#iftheycouldseemenow #Goddess.
Minutes later they were rushing out of Number One, St Ninian’s Close, the heavy door slamming behind them, Kelsey clutching the tickets tightly in her fist.
They were almost late, tiptoeing into the packed auditorium of the Willow Studio and taking their seats just as the house lights dimmed and a tremulous, expectant hush fell over the audience.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Speak low if you speak love’
(Much Ado About Nothing)
The goosebumps prickled on Kelsey’s arms. It happened every time during those few seconds of anticipatory darkness before the action began on stage. All the familiar theatre aromas were there: tweedy old men, Brylcreem, mothballs, and everyone in their best clothes, all blending in the air with the dry ice, pre-theatre red wine, and a hundred different colognes and perfumes. But this time it felt even more intense and Kelsey knew the reason. She was going to see Jonathan again.
Why do I feel like this? He’s Peony’s man, not to mention a terrible, shameless flirt for making me imagine he liked me then ditching me without any apology or explanation. Her pulse beat loudly in her eardrums as she agitatedly arranged the slippery fabric of her flowing dress over her knees and tried to take some deep calming breaths. ‘I’ve got you now,’ he said last night at the pub, and like an idiot I felt all safe and wanted. How can he not be genuine?
There, in the silent, dark auditorium, against all logic and common sense, her heart pounded with exhilaration. He was here. She was going to see him again. The beautiful American with the perfect pink curling smile and the deep drawling accent was at that exact moment waiting in the wings, ready to step onstage and bathe in the blinding spotlights as blue and piercing as his almond-lidded irises. Kelsey held her breath and tightly screwed up her eyes with anticipation. The auditorium seemed to swim and skirl around her as a flute and harp began to play offstage and the lights slowly started to creep up. A strange smile played across her lips in the darkness. Any moment now she was going to see him again.
Exhaling, Kelsey opened her eyes, but she wasn’t greeted by the sight of Jonathan as Oberon. There on the stage in her swinging fairy bower was Peony, looking utterly resplendent and ravishing as the sleeping Titania, Oberon’s cruel and contrary fairy queen. She was in the same flowing white dress that she’d worn the day she’d cut short the photo shoot, but now her temples, wrists, and plunging neckline were painted with black and white petals and the curling tendrils of pale green ivy leaves. Her hair was teased into a wild bundle on top of her head with long flowing strands falling down over her pale shoulders which glistened with a dewy silvery lustre that covered every inch of exposed flesh. Her tall, spiked, silver crown towered above her beautiful head and the spotlights reflected in its thousand twinkling, dancing diamonds.
As the music swelled, Titania awoke. She yawned and stretched her impossibly long, lithe body, letting her bare feet and slender ankles dip down to the floor. Slowly, she slipped out of her bower and onto the mossy green stage, revealing behind her a tiny changeling boy curled up asleep inside the fairy hideaway. The audience heaved a collective sigh at the sight of the beautiful child who was also covered from head to toe in shimmering silver.
Wordlessly, Titania scooped the little boy up into her arms and cautiously stole away with delicate steps as the forest scene fell dark again. The whole effect was utterly enchanting. The scene was now set for Oberon’s entrance. He’d appear soon, maddened with envy that Titania was devoting herself to the tiny fairy child and neglecting him, her ki
ng.
When Mirren, smiling and amazed, turned her head to glance at her friend, she was shocked to see Kelsey’s face wet with tears. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.
Kelsey shook her head dejectedly, taking the crumpled tissue Mirren offered. She spoke breathlessly, ‘I’ll tell you after.’ More tears rolled down her blanched cheeks.
Mirren didn’t have to wait until the interval to discover the reason for Kelsey’s tears. Moments later, she’d observed her friend’s expression change as Oberon stepped out of the gloomy wings and into the brilliant light of centre stage.
Illuminated in an ethereal halo, his muscular frame shone. He was clad in nothing but silver velvet breeches with a delicately glistening brocade down the seams. His skin was brushed over with glinting golden dust and his deep chestnut hair was slicked back with gleaming streaks of silver pomade and crowned with a delicate headdress of golden feathers. From the broad space in between his taut shoulder blades were fixed gossamer wings like an angel’s. His brows, cheekbones, and jaw were lightly brushed with gold too, making him appear exotic and timeless. His eyes were lined thinly with smoky black kohl, reminiscent of a 1920s silent-film star in some sultry Saharan movie. His deeply bowed lips were bare save for the lightest touch of silver.
After drinking him in with her longing eyes, lost in wonder, Kelsey let her gaze fall down to her lap where Mirren’s hand tightly gripped her own. Mirren knew the look of a broken heart. The friends didn’t need to exchange another look or word throughout the long performance.
The audience laughed raucously at the action as the young couples in the forest, Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, fell in and out of love, duped and dazed by spells and potions, magic and midsummer madness, but Kelsey was too overwhelmed by the shock of seeing Jonathan to take any of it in.
At the interval, Mirren leaned over, kissed her friend gently on the forehead, and slipped out to the foyer to get her some cool mineral water and a huge box of Maltesers. Kelsey sat in silence as the auditorium emptied and refilled again, barely hearing the happy vacationers’ chatter. Had she looked up for one moment she might have spotted Jonathan in the shadows offstage, peering around a costume rail, trying to stay hidden from view of the audience but desperate to look at Kelsey, just for a few seconds.
‘Psst! Kelsey… up here.’
But she couldn’t hear him. She had no idea he was watching her, not caring a whit about appearing unprofessional.
Jonathan’s shoulders dropped in resignation just as he felt Peony take his hand, yanking him back into the darkness of the wings. She shot him a steely look of warning before storming off, hurrying to make herself ready for their final scenes.
After the interval, when Oberon stalked back out onto the sylvan green set, spreading his magnificent wings and incanting the spell to awaken the poor lost and confused mortals on the stage, releasing them from their fairy curse, Kelsey felt sure he was looking directly at her with a strange wildness in his eyes as he delivered his lines in a perfect clear and crisp English accent.
‘Crush this herb into Lysander’s eye – whose liquor hath this virtuous property, to take from thence all error with his might, and make his eyeballs roll with wanted sight. When they next wake, all this derision shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.’
Kelsey looked on, her expression neutral, steeling herself not to betray the strong emotions bursting inside her chest. This was goodbye. She’d go home tonight with Mirren and tell her everything and cry her heart out and that would be an end to it. Only one scene left and all the dazed lovers would wake from their enchantments, pair up with their beloveds and leave the forest to prepare for marriage: a happy ending for everyone involved.
Kelsey however, hadn’t anticipated the very last seconds of the drama as Titania and Oberon were reunited. She watched helplessly as Jonathan took Peony in his arms and kissed her softly on the lips. Kelsey wondered momentarily if the kiss was unusually brief for reconciled lovers, but mainly, she was just glad that the sudden clashing sounds in her ears and the stab in her chest as she watched them in each other’s arms had been swift and sudden. It was all over.
She clapped mechanically in an exhausted daze as the cast took their bows. Some of the audience stood for an ovation. The play was clearly a great success, but Jonathan didn’t smile, and his grave, intense eyes never once left Kelsey’s face as he took two long, low bows. Peony, however, was grinning widely, bowing and curtseying, holding Jonathan’s hand tightly, raising it up into the air in triumph over and over again.
I get it, Kelsey thought. We mere mortals need to know when to give up. The fairies can have him. I’m done.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Summer’s lease hath all too short a date’
(Sonnet 18)
Mirren let Kelsey sleep late the next morning. They’d talked for hours the night before, Kelsey fully resolved that she needed to move on from Jonathan. Mirren had helped a lot, asking the kind of questions that a friend who’s sick of seeing men running hot and cold on their best mate should ask. As they’d ploughed through a huge bag of razor-sharp crisps sitting up on the terrace in the starlight, Mirren had wondered aloud, ‘What do you really know about this guy, anyway? Or this Peony, for that matter? He tells you he loves her like a sister but he’s kowtowing to her like a lover? And that cheesy newspaper article! PB and J? It’s enough to make you spew.’
In the end they’d fallen asleep in Kelsey’s bed as the sun was just peeking up over the Welcombe hills waking the raucous morning chorus in the gardens of St Ninian’s Close.
* * *
Even though she’d have willingly shoved her own granny under a bus for a strong coffee, Mirren silently poured herself some milk, not wanting to wake Kelsey with the hiss and bubble of the kettle. She sat on the white carpet beside the bed sipping quietly, looking around her on the floor for a gossip magazine. There, under the bed, were two brightly coloured cardboard envelopes. She silently edged the envelopes out from underneath the piled up shoes and the slightly dusty editions of plays and photography magazines that had begun to clutter up Kelsey’s bedside – a true sign her friend had made herself thoroughly at home in the toasty-warm little flat. Mirren noiselessly lifted out the gleaming colour prints.
She discovered lots of pictures of a beautiful old house and garden taken from over a low hedge in the evening sunlight. Mirren couldn’t know as she flicked through shot after shot that the house was Shakespeare’s Birthplace. Obviously taken some weeks ago, its flowers had all the blowsy freshness and vibrancy of early summer and were a stark reminder of how deeply they had already descended into the season. This descent was charted further in the photos taken more recently capturing the country lanes and hills around Stratford in all their overblown lushness and greenery, the thick hedgerows and chestnut trees casting dark black afternoon shadows upon the earth.
Then there were photographs of a smiling, jolly bunch of people Mirren had never met before. A big gap-toothed body-builder type, a young fair-haired boy – the slender studious type, a gorgeous red-headed guy in dark shades, and three grinning women, one dressed from head to foot in chic lilac and mauve. Judging by the others’ uniforms she figured these must be some of Kelsey’s colleagues. They looked so friendly and like a bonded little gang. ‘Good for you. You’re back to being the old Kelsey again,’ Mirren murmured under her breath as she scanned the happy faces, recalling how her friend had once been part of a similarly cheerful group at uni when she’d been a member of the student photography society and busily planning their exhibition. All that had fallen by the wayside when Fran arrived on the scene with other priorities for Kelsey.
It was the buzz of a text alert that woke Kelsey at last. Mirren read the message out loud to her as she rubbed the sleep from tired, swollen eyes.
I hope you enjoyed the play last night. You looked kind of unhappy. Are things OK? Let me know when you’re finally free. I’d love to buy you a coffee. Jonathan.
Mirren shrugged. ‘What do you want me to reply?’
Kelsey thought for a moment. ‘Tell him I’m unlikely to be free for the foreseeable future. Not for him anyway, the wanker.’ Kelsey was too exhausted to re-tread old ground but her thoughts strayed to their date at the Yorick. He is a wanker, a gorgeous, kissable, lying, cheating wish-he-was-mine wanker.
‘You’re the boss. I’ll put “Sorry. I’m not free. Kelsey”. And send. Good riddance Mr Hathaway. Now, can we do something fun please, something that doesn’t involve shady blokes?’
The rest of that day turned out to be one of those golden summer memories that live on like a hazy, half-recalled perfect dream, one of the most joyful, simple days of Kelsey and Mirren’s friendship.
Even before mid-morning, Stratford was baking in the summer heat. Slathering themselves in sun cream and slipping on strappy dresses, dark shades, sandals and, in Mirren’s case, an enormous black floppy hat, they wandered, hair loose and messy, arm-in-arm down to the bus station by the river where they were to collect their tickets for the Scenic Cotswolds Vintage Bus Tour. Kelsey had bought them online days ago, jumping at the chance to get out of town and explore the gently rolling hills and picturesque villages to the south that she’d heard so much about but never seen. They had half an hour and some errands to run before their little excursion started.
‘Over here, we need to get provisions first.’ Kelsey led her friend towards the deli barge in the canal basin and they stood in the shade of its blue stripy awning. After the queue cleared, they ordered their provisions: chicken, avocado, and bacon baguettes, a tomato salad with dill dressing, and two bottles of lemonade, one cloudy and one pink; the posh kind with the old-fashioned stoppers in the top, so you know it’s going to be both delicious and expensive. Mirren insisted on paying, complaining that she hadn’t been able to treat Kelsey to anything yet, and Kelsey packed all the provisions away in her satchel. All set, they walked down through the marina and across the theatre gardens.
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